Culture

The complete transcript of Jeff McMullen's Lecture at Charles Darwin University on 6 Augus 2015 - Vincent Lingiari knew who he was and that this land held him close to its heart. "You can keep your gold. We just want our land back." The Old Man knew that the answer was in the hearts of good men and women who stood together as the best of mates. He never doubted what was right, no matter how long it took or how many tried to buy him off. The Old Man outlasted all the naysayers because he lived his value system and he led good people with him on the long road towards equality.

A new genetic study is threatening to transform theories about who the original Native Americans were after finding certain tribes in the Amazon are related to Aborigines in Australia. Researchers believe these stories could constitute some of the oldest accurate oral histories in the world, passing through some 300 generations. Traditional stories passed down through generations by Australian Aborigines may be among the oldest accurate oral histories in the world. 'About 2 per cent of the ancestry of Amazonians today comes from this Australasian lineage that's not present in the same way elsewhere in the Americas.'

Murrumu Walubara Yidindji, the former Canberra press gallery journalist previously known as Jeremy Geia, who has renounced Australia to live under tribal law in far North Queensland has been booked for using his own Nations registration plates on his car. Murrumu is behind the establishment of an infant sovereign Yidindji government near Cairns. He is now the nation’s "foreign affairs and trade minister" and says he has referred the matter to his “attorney general for further investigation”

(PLEASE NOTE: The determined substitute name for the passing of the writer and performer of 'Brown Skin Baby' is Kwementyaye).

If you want to meet the best Australians, meet Indigenous men and women who understand this extraordinary country and have fought for the rights of the world's oldest culture. Theirs is a struggle more selfless, heroic and enduring than any historical adventure non-Indigenous Australians are required incessantly to celebrate.        

"We have never been given the opportunity to live in our own ways ... since occupation of our lands in 1829, we have been forced, by successive policies, to be a reactive people. Now we are trying to change to be proactive, but we need time to do that in our own way. We are in the process of re-piecing together our community with our own value system, starting here at Heirisson Island," said Bella Bropho at the Matagarup Refugee Camp on Heirisson Island, Perth, Western Australia.

While undergoing conservation work on existing Aboriginal rock images in the Grampians, rangers stumbled upon two new previously unknown and unrecorded sites, conserving them will be the challenge. At one site a mixture of ochre and emu egg has been used across the top of a hand to create a stencil. While a series of figures and lines appear on a rock at another site. These were recently discovered by rangers in the Grampians while working in the fire affected areas. "The more we look the more we find," said Chief Ranger David Roberts.

Indigenous land and sea rangers have called on the government to expand what they say is one of the most successful Indigenous jobs programs, caring for the huge swaths of protected land across the country. However, it falls on the deaf ears of racist and greedy governments who prefer to destroy the land with mining and sell the rest to China.
In doing so, they further damage the climate for everyone's children and grandchildren's future, including their own descendants.